A federal judge on Aug. 5 allowed the Trump administration to end temporary protected status (TPS) for an estimated 350,000 Haitian nationals following a Supreme Court ruling.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes ruled that a previous court order that “had stayed the effective date of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s Termination of the Designation of Haiti for Temporary Protected Status pending judicial review … is no longer in effect.”
But Reyes also denied the government’s request to halt discovery in the lawsuit that was filed over TPS in Haiti. She told the plaintiffs and the government to provide a new schedule in the order.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last year said that around 350,000 Haitian nationals were living in the United States when Noem, who left the administration earlier this year, issued an order ending TPS for the country.
Multiple courts paused enforcement of the order before the Supreme Court in June ruled that the Trump administration could go ahead with rescinding the rule.
Before the judge’s Wednesday ruling at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned in an interview that Haitians under the program should leave the United States.
“We’re going after them right now … these individuals can either self-deport or we’ll arrest you and send you back. It’s that simple,” he said.
Under the Biden administration, TPS policies were expanded, allowing hundreds of thousands of people from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Haiti, and other countries to remain in the United States. The Trump administration has moved to revoke TPS for a number of countries, saying that the program was meant to be temporary.
Homeland Security officials said that the TPS program, which was set up under the Immigration Act of 1990, has become a magnet for illegal immigrants in recent years.
“Using TPS to grant temporary status to successive waves of new arrivals from a designated country may generate a significant pull factor for illegal immigration and act in tension with the congressional design,” the agency said in a Federal Register notice.
Meanwhile, DHS said in the Federal Register notice and in court papers that conditions in Haiti no longer justify the designation.
During arguments before the Supreme Court, Geoffrey Pipoly, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, claimed that the TPS termination was due to President Donald Trump’s “racial animus towards non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians, in particular.”
In the high court ruling, a 6–3 majority ruled that the president has the right to start deporting people from Haiti and Syria and that federal law usually bars judicial review of future TPS terminations or designations.
TPS was designated for Haiti in January 2010 following a major earthquake and was extended multiple times.
